Apple, Google and Microsoft to face off for 'digital living room'

Apple has taken an early lead in the race for seamless access to content, but Google and Microsoft remain close contenders, according to a new analysis.

Maynard Um with UBS Investment Research issued the report as a note to investors Wednesday. After analyzing each of the key players in the race for the "Global Digital Living Room," Um views Apple as a front runner because of its "head start in media-generated content" and strong ecosystems such as the App Store.

Um sees the "Global Digital Living Room," defined as the "ability to move and access content anywhere in the world," as the next step in the consumer market. It's a "holy grail" of seamless cloud-based access to "all types of content across all types of devices anywhere and at all times."

The race for this level of access is still in its "early stages," but Apple, Google, and Microsoft have emerged as the key players. Amazon, Samsung, and Sony are seen as "dark horses," and HP, Nokia, and Research in Motion are "challenged."

Google's strength lies in its early advances in cloud-based access and the accelerating growth of Android, but the company risks fragmentation at the hands of multiple hardware partnerships with varying specifications, Um wrote.

Microsoft has made early inroads into providing content on the TV with the Xbox and can leverage its domination of the PC OS market, but Um believes that Microsoft needs much tighter integration between platforms in order to succeed.

According to the report, Apple is the current winner of the "In-Home Digital Living Room battle," i.e. the "ability to move and access content within the home," and has a head start on going "global." The Cupertino, Calif., company "offers the most seamless access to one of the largest libraries of media-generated content (music & apps, in particular) on multiple screens in the home through iTunes."

UBS expects front-facing cameras in the next iteration of the iPad as part of Apple's push to ship FaceTime on even more devices. Um also predicts that FaceTime will get support for 3G networks in 2011 and spread to all Apple devices with front-facing cameras (including Macs).

Despite Apple's attempts to reinvent the Apple TV, UBS still views the updated device as "limited." In the future, however, UBS expects Apple TV to "evolve and offer more functionality."

Regarding Apple's weakness in cloud-based services, Um views Apple's nearly-completed North Carolina data center as an important investment for "the battle for the Global Digital Living Room." Without it, Apple would continue to fall behind Google and Microsoft on "cloud computing abilities."

Apple maintains a significant hardware advantage over its competitors. Recent attempts by Microsoft and Google to "get into the hardware game" resulted in failure. Google's Nexus One phone failed to meet expectations. Microsoft's youth-oriented Kin smartphone was short-lived, surviving just 48 days on the market.

On the downside, UBS views Apple's "closed ecosystem" as a potential risk for the company. Additionally, the difficulty of fully integrating all of Apple's platforms and services is another hurdle for the company.

They both look very solid at this point, as Microsoft Media Center is already very skilled in this area, and Google TV shows great promise and pending support for Android apps, one can only hope that Apple has greater plans in the future for Apple TV, because as it stands, it's seriously lacking - IMO.

I have been using DLNA to stream content to an Xbox and to and from both Sony and Samsung mobiles. In the case of the Xbox I have been doing so for over year. Suddenly Apple decides to hypocritically eschew the existing open standard - DLNA - and introduce a competing propritry system which is all of what - 2 weeks old? - yet it is immediately declared the 'leading contender.

Honestly, Steve Jobs' 'reality distortion field' appears to have mutated and is now contagious. i hope someone comes up with a vaccine soon.

The funny thing is, no two people are going to agree on what this so-called digital living room should look like. No matter how hard some analysts try to find it, there is no holy grail, just a bunch of different corporate ideas about how to package, provide and move content around, all of the players in constant competition with each other, all wanting control, all suspicious of each other. Nobody, not even Apple, can throw a single net over this -- even if consumers really knew what they wanted out of all this portable content. Which, they don't. It's a hopelessly fragmented market that nobody can even define, let alone dominate.

Funny how when Apple doesn't do so well the trolls quiet down and leave the forum I guess they feel that in those cases people would agree with them, and what's the point of being a troll if you're not a contrarian, right?

The first two I can get as video podcasts...I miss Formula One, though. Tennis not so much. Like the comment above I'd rather be out and about playing tennis rather than sitting on the couch watching it and the incessant commercials!

Funny how when Apple doesn't do so well the trolls quiet down and leave the forum I guess they feel that in those cases people would agree with them, and what's the point of being a troll if you're not a contrarian, right?

You need to consider time zones. If you live on the East Coast of the US it is roughly 1 am in NY and 7 am in Amsterdam. A lot of people will be asleep.

They both look very solid at this point, as Microsoft Media Center is already very skilled in this area, and Google TV shows great promise and pending support for Android apps, one can only hope that Apple has greater plans in the future for Apple TV, because as it stands, it's seriously lacking - IMO.

I agree. I see Google TV having the advantage with their deals with TV manufacturers. Unless Apple started manufacturing TVs (well outsourcing their designs to a manufacturer) I think Google will dominate.